Shinola Shines On In Detroit, Moves Past Local Criticism

City pride is a bizarre habit to explain to the unfamiliar. “Boston Strong,” the admirable rally for residents after attacks at the city’s marathon, quickly evolved into a catch-all colloquialism that baffles, maybe annoys, those outside the Northeast. “Who dat” is something no one outside New Orleans understands, and if Cincinnati had its way, chili would be made nowhere else.

And then there’s Detroit, which, contrary to what one might read in the papers, still has thousands of people that love the city fiercely and are balls-out defensive when it comes to who can claim it. You see, this is the city where outsiders are quizzed on mile road they grew up near (anything less than eight -- yeah, that “8 Mile” -- is dismissed), the city where your undying loyalty to one of four professional sports teams is tested, the city where you might be asked what your favorite gas-station snack is.

Detroit Bike City Shinola (Photo credit: russteaches)

The answer to that last question is, always, a bag of Better Made potato chips and Faygo pop. Better Made and Faygo are both Detroit companies that have been operating in Detroit for many, many years and they are undeniably Detroit. There is no question about their mission or background, or even their address.

But now there’s Shinola, a fine, handmade watch company that set up shop in the city limits with the purpose of, well, selling fine, handmade watches. Oh! And bringing back the pride of manufacturing. And doing it in Detroit, where we drew the blueprints of American manufacturing. Today, the watchmaker expands with Willys Detroit, a storefront with outdoor clothing and other wares.

In its short time in operation -- the founders of Shinola bought the intellectual property of the old shoe-polish company and voila! Now there’s shoe polish and watches -- Shinola has become a darling of the fashion press with its two-handed approach of marketing luxury goods in the city of Detroit. Dig up any press about Shinola in the last year or so and these two ideals are constantly intertwined.

From an outsider’s standpoint, this is all well and good. After all, Detroit has been on a downward spiral for decades before it became the largest municipality to file for bankruptcy last year. Any development in the city, particularly one that can provide jobs for a population that’s 17% unemployed, 47% illiterate and 38% below the poverty line, is a good thing.

South of Eight Mile Road, the feeling is not so mutual. Huh?

In Detroit, we’ve seen a lot of Shinola in a very short time, and perhaps it was too much, too fast for some. Reporters hopped on every press release issued by the company, happily went along on factory tours, and breathlessly regurgitated reviews of Shinola products from national publications.

At the North American International Auto Show, our turbocharged, piston-pumping version of Fashion Week, Shinola’s influence was clear. It wasn’t just the fact that the watchmaker had partnered with Ford’s Lincoln brand and opened up its own booth next to an entry-level luxury crossover, where car shoppers could also browse handmade baseballs and leather-bound journals. It was the fact that nearly every American automotive executive was rocking some Shinola hardware on their wrists this year -- and so were many of the journalists with recorders in their faces.

Detroit reached peak Shinola when in February, the company and the city partnered together to unveil four city clocks around town, with the Shinola logo clear on the faces. And that’s when people started to have enough.

See, there had already been growing sentiments about Shinola’s mission. For one, the company’s $1,000 bicycles weren’t an easy sell to critics who quickly pointed out that the average Detroiter is likely living off a monthly stipend of the same amount. “Can the factory workers even afford the watches they make?” was a common refrain every time an outlet rolled out another image of workers in hairnets carefully assembling a timepiece.

But it was the “Made in Detroit” ethos Detroiters began to hone in on next. Is it genuine, or co-opting a city narrative to sell a product?

Okay, so, maybe the potatoes shredded up at the Better Made plant might not have been grown here, but Better Made earned its stripes to call their chips a Detroit original. Those respects have been nonexistent with Shinola, as people began to pick apart the little things. The boxes for the watches are made in Minnesota. The parts for the bicycles are made in Wisconsin. The company has a $14.5 million flagship store in New York City! -- say it like an incredulous cowboy in one of those old Pace salsa commercials. But what about the tinier Detroit storefront?

To figure out how we arrived here, we have to go back to why Shinola chose Detroit for its headquarters. The idea came from meetings at Bedrock Manufacturing in Dallas -- more ammo for the Detroit haters club -- where “people were very receptive to the idea” of building a resurgence of American manufacturing in the Motor City, Shinola CEO Steve Bock says.

“Detroit is a city based on craftsmanship and workmanship and manufacturing,” he says.

The idea to take it a step further and market “Detroit” in Shinola’s offerings came from other fashion houses -- think DKNY and the like. “Different companies use the word ‘New York’ with all of their products...to be proud of where we are, to be very happy to incorporate the name,” Bock says.

“Because of (Detroit’s manufacturing) past, I don’t see any risk whatsoever,” Bock adds when asked about selling luxury products from a city with a maligned image.

“Every company makes a decision as to how they establish themselves. We’re very transparent, very honest. We’ve been here for two years, but we’ve always felt that the city is a very important part of our future.”

Bock regularly shuttles across the country and beyond selling Shinola; after our call, he mentions he’ll be headed to Europe soon for a two-week business jaunt. He’s heard praises for settling in Detroit from outside the city, but says he hasn’t heard criticism from Detroiters.

Like prior interviews with Shinola staffers, Bock quickly mentions that 90% of Shinola’s workforce is based in Detroit and the majority of its distribution is concentrated here as well.

On their merits as a tried-and-true Detroit company, “we can’t do anything about the fact that we’ve started two years ago,” Bock says and it’d be “terribly arrogant” to suggest that they’re singlehandedly driving the city’s comeback. But on the company’s critics, “what those people are missing are our belief in the future.”

“What is the negative of proudly saying that we’re here?” Bock asks.

And yes, you can buy a $400 Shinola watch in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood, just a mile or two from the drug-riddled, not-as-glamorous Cass Corridor neighborhood. But you can also buy them at any Saks Fifth Avenue in the country -- including Troy, a well-to-do Oakland County suburb north of Detroit.

“We’re not a charity. We’re here to be a successful company that makes money,” Bock says.

And money is certainly what Detroit needs as the city rebuilds its tax base through an influx of new business and residents. It’s here that Shinola returns to its unabashedly glossy prospects.

“Most of the press wants to talk about the challenges that the city has been through, and the challenges that the city has to be set in the right direction,” Bock says, “but we’re very optimistic about the future.”

In any other city in the world, such a rosy outlook would be fully embraced. Still, not so in Detroit.

“Shinola and other entrepreneurs market themselves as white knights, swooping in to save the noble savages,” Jon Moy, a Detroit native, wrote in a much-shared piece for Four Pins, a men’s style website. “They help assuage the guilt associated with gentrification and consumerism by pointing out how strong and proud and culturally important the natives truly are—that simply by choosing to be in Detroit, Shinola is somehow better than other companies selling similar products.”

Granted, not one blogger can speak for all of Detroit, but the rapid-fire amount of co-signs and “you see! you see!”-style comments on Moy’s thoughts can’t be ignored.

Matthew Burnett, another Detroit native who briefly ran a similar boutique watchmaker, Steel Cake, in the city, doesn’t see the fuss. “Profit is being made locally, and most importantly, more Detroiters are being employed,” he says. “I think the affiliation is a benefit to the Detroit brand and to the
local economy.”

But economics aren’t enough to satisfy the stubborn, as it’s likely another one of Shinola’s critics will disassemble the next shiny, new Shinola product and challenge its Detroit origins. Or perhaps dissect these words here.